Ars Moriendi
by egelantier
Summary: Five rejuvenations Kalique Abrasax took and one she didn't.


Kalique is twenty-two on the day she walks into the dining pagoda and into an argument between Balem and Mother they both seem to enjoy. She sits quietly for twenty minutes of Balem going on at length about Legion being too greedy and expecting too much for too little and Mother mildly pointing out that if the war is lost there won't be a market left for their wares at proper prices, but when they delve into numbers and boring details, her patience runs out.

She drops a glass with carefully calculated clumsiness and beams a beatific smile when Mother and Balem turn to look at her. It is her birthday, after all, and on this day at least she expects accolades and adoration instead of quarrels about war and profits and losses. Her new golden dress is gorgeous and made to outrage, her hair is swept into a deceptively simple knot that took her maids an hour to create, and the day belongs to her.

She isn't prepared for Balem's face to scrunch up in startled distaste when he sees her.

"Honestly, Kalique, can't you at least try to pay more attention to yourself? This is a shame."

"I... what?"

She turns to Mother for rescue and finds her looking at her - not with the same distaste, and Kalique would've died if she did, but not like she always does, either.

"Mother, what's wrong?"

Her heart is hammering unpleasantly in her chest. Her palms start to sweat. How could the day turn into disaster so fast? Why is Balem - why is Mother -

"Dear," Mother says, "had you looked into any mirrors today?"

Kalique's hands fly up to her face, her hair: for a terrified moment she imagines herself melt, turn into some kind of monstrous splice under her questioning fingers. But this is silly: she looked, she always looks, she was fine this morning, she's beautiful, _it's her birthday..._

Mother is next to her before she notices. Mother holds out her hand and one of the servants puts a mirror into it. Kalique stares at herself, dumbfounded, and Mother's fingers trace fine, almost invisible lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth.

"Don't be upset, Kalique, darling. You laugh so much, it's a joy to hear! But you're an Abrasax, and it won't do for it to show. How about we do something about it? I didn't expect to give it to you so soon, but it will be a wonderful start for your birthday, won't it?"

Kalique doesn't understand but nods anyway. Whatever Mother says, whatever she wants, just to stop whatever is happening. Her ears are ringing. She's afraid she might faint.

Mother's turned away from her, giving low unhurried orders, and Balem's staring at her with the same horrified disdain, and Kalique watches the little red crescents her nails left in her palms, and waits for the verdict.

She's swept along in Mother's trail not long after, and when she comes back to herself, they are in the - oh. Oh. They're in Mother's rejuvenation chamber, and now Kalique understands.

There's nobody but them in the chamber, Balem and servants and maids shed somewhere in their wake, and Kalique shrugs off her painstakingly created dress, trembles in long horrible shivers. Mother smiles at her, picks up a goblet from one of the floating trays, brings it to Kalique's lips.

"Nothing to be afraid of, Kalique. This is your inheritance. My gift."

Kalique knows what to do. Kalique says, "Thank you, Mother."

The water is warm, fresh, soothing. It hugs Kalique, cradles her, hums around her when she curls up at the bottom of the pool, and then pierces her with such _delight_ \- Kalique laughs under the water, forgetting herself, and the water slides painlessly and easily in and out of her lungs, weightless, safe. What was she upset about? She can't remember.

She rises from the water, every cell of her body vibrant with new life, and Mother is looking at her with pride.

She's an Abrasax, after all. She is perfect.

* * *

Oluia's skin is forest green, her hands are gentle; her lips are like soft red petals. She looks at Kalique with reverence and adoration, and her soft touches make Kalique feel weightless, all-powerful, transcendental.

Alive.

Balem is scornful, dismissive; every time he sees them together - holding hands, laughing, stealing kisses on thousands of the terraces of the palace, sneaking away to swoop in Kalique's flyer over the canyons - his face twists in familiar haughtiness. Then again, nothing much pleases him these days; Kalique missed the moment when his occasional sourness turned into a full-time occupation.

Mother doesn't even seem to notice, occupied as she is with her precious newborn. It'd be unpleasant to see her doting, cooing, too startlingly human, but Kalique doesn't care. Kalique's in love.

They twine together in the waters of revival, heedless of servants and maids and technicians, and every little burst of cells rearranging themselves feels like an eternity of promises, loyalties, joy. Kalique's going to live forever, with Oluia at her side; taste every moment of this forever and share the flavor, lips to lips.

Kalique walks around the corner one day and hears Balem's cold, contemptuous voice intermingling with Oluia's. She almost rushes in to the rescue, but hesitates just for a moment.

"...how much longer do you hope to keep her interest, girl? You're a nobody, less than one. You can spin this grand romance for what, five years more? Fifty? One dose of RegenX will buy you more time."

"Lord Balem, I..."

"I'm tired of you and I'm tired of my foolish sister prancing around like she's one of, one of you insects, and this is going to stop now. Twenty doses of RegenX, and you're going to disappear. This is the best offer you're ever going to get."

Kalique holds her breath, outraged. She's going to listen to Oluia to refuse him and then storm in and kill him, and then -

She's already crossing the threshold when Oluia's quiet, beloved voice finally answers.

"Deal." 

A month later Mother sweeps into her suite, unannounced, and for once without a child in tow. Kalique raises her head to look at her and can't muster either outrage or welcome. She's been tired ever since that day, exhausted down to the bone. She can't even find it in herself to dread the inevitably coming reprisal.

Mother brings with her a handful of sheaves. She sits down next to Kalique and says something unexpected.

"You shouldn't blame her, you know."

"What?!"

"We are divine beings, Kalique. You'll still be young when her grandchildren's children turn into dust. How could she truly love a goddess? She tried the next best thing she could: to hold onto your time and make it hers."

She smells of her gardens and not, for once, of the sharp ozone tang of fresh rejuvenation. It's familiar and unfamiliar at once, startling and soothing.

"But I loved her, Mother."

"Did you? Would you, in a millennium? But I don't want to quarrel with you about it, dear heart. Want to hear what I came to offer?"

Kalique, surprised, finds that she wants. If there's somebody who could put her disordered world to rights it's Mother. She nods, takes the sheaves.

"I didn't want to involve you with the family business until you asked, but maybe it is time for you to take an interest. Find your own place, maybe? There are several planets that are ripe for Harvest, and any of them could be a part of your inheritance. Want to choose one now?"

Kalique startles, almost dropping the sheaves. She knows the nature of the "family business", of course, but before now she was neither invited to join the game Mother and Balem have been playing for eons nor particularly curious. To pick the next Harvest...

She flips through the sheaves, and the planets dance before her one after one, each blooming, dancing with colors, full of life. One of them catches her eye, spires and domes and delicate walkways of forest green. She zooms in to see people laughing in the street, finds a couple holding hands. The name of the planet is Cerise.

She sets the sheaves down. Exhales, inhales, straightens her shoulders.

"I want this one, Mother. And after the Harvest is over I think I'm going to remake it for myself."

* * *

Aegis sends an officer to deliver the news in person. The woman is young and wears her brand-new captain uniform with almost painful dignity. Kalique listens to her report - official gravitas and unexpectedly humane compassion - and thanks Captain Tsing without a change in her expression. Her hands don't shake, her breathing doesn't change. She's an Abrasax, an Abrasax, an Abrasax. The second Abrasax in line, now.

After the Aegis ship is away, she tells Malidictes to prepare a flyer for her, sends her ladies and her guards away. There's nobody on Cerise to bring her harm: nothing but flowers and bees and little iridescent fish in clear streams. She made it so, thousands of years ago.

She takes the flyer away from the palace, two hours of flight in a straight line, to the garden that she planted herself, the first spot of color on the new dark fertile soil of terraformed Cerise. It's a beautiful day, clear and golden-warm; it was a day like this when she put the first seeds into the ground, seeds from Mother's gardens. Fragile crimson petals, tough green stems. By now Cerise is wrapped in a cloud of flowers' fragrance - heady, intoxicating. Familiar.

That's where Kalique screams. That's where she beats the ground with her fists, that's where she tears the flowers out and scatters them on the ground, hundreds of strewn petals like rivers of blood. This is where she cries.

When she exhausts herself she sleeps on broken and weeping stems, but her dreams are just as full of her own voice screaming: how dare you, how dare you, how dare you, Mother, how dare you, how dare you. How dare you.

Kalique wakes up and thinks: in the coffin her mother will be old. All the bitter unfinished arguments over the betrayal of Mother's latest years, and she's going to have the last word _like this_.

She gets up. Her skin is scratched, her fingers are bleeding, her dress is torn. She steps into the flyer, contacts Malidictes, orders him to prepare the chamber at once.

She's an Abrasax, even if Mother betrayed the name in the end and forever, now. And at the funeral, she's going to look the part.

* * *

When the first reports come in, Kalique almost doesn't believe it. Mother, recurred, cleaning up after other people? Somewhere Balem must be having a _fit._ Kalique tries to imagine any of her splices-in-waiting or even androids being presented with a menial task like this one and all she comes up with is them fainting in outrage.

Whatever Balem's intentions towards the recurrence are, they're going to be unpleasant, she can infer that much, and Titus is likely to try some clumsy intrigue (she always thought Mother indulged him too much, and tried unsuccessfully not to be too bitter about it). And so she sets her own plans in motion without a clear idea of the desired outcome. Maybe just because it's _Mother_ , and for once she's going to have her first.

When the mercenaries bring the girl to her, Kalique's fascinated: this is how Mother must have looked in her first life, the one none of them have seen. The radiance of youth without wisdom or grace or sorrow; Jupiter's hands are calloused, rough. Kalique walks next to her floating body being steered into the guest suite, and Jupiter's palm catches on her dress, snagging the fragile weave.

Kalique leaves the orders to settle her with maids and flees to watch from the safer distance of her parlor screen.

When she finally meets Jupiter awake, the contrast is even more startling. The exquisite dress her ladies chose fits Jupiter like a glove and yet sits on her painfully wrong. Mother's delicate features are blunt and plain on her face. Her voice is neither smooth nor powerful: it's awkward, stumbling, jarring.

The eyes are the same.

She doesn't know about RegenX. She's pretty judgmental about her suspicions all the same, and Kalique swallows down centuries worth of anger while keeping up the stream of chatter. Again, Mother? The world you've built, the one you fit me into, and now you dare to accuse me?

Kalique's rapidly rearranging her plans: she will help the girl claim her title, oh yes - if only she could bribe somebody to capture the look on Balem's face! - and then bring her back, and _teach_ her… What a lovely revenge it would be. Just how much of this hateful idealism would be left once Jupiter tastes the rebirth for the first time?

She's not due for a rejuvenation for a while yet, and she's loath to give up the worn out grooves of her current body, the hidden thrill of victory she feels every time she sees her lined face in the glittering surfaces of the alcazar. But for the first lesson one has to make sacrifices.

She looks at Jupiter from under the surface, lets every second of soul-rending ecstasy show, and smiles. Want to take a journey with me, Mother? This time, I will lead.

* * *

The next time she sees Jupiter is at Balem's funeral. She looks graceless and out of place, dwarfed by the sweeping arches of Balem's palace (crystal and metal, stars looking in), shifting from foot to foot. Her splice is looming behind her, scanning the crowd suspiciously. Kalique imagines he feels bereft without a weapon, even though he's a weapon himself.

She'd like to ignore Jupiter, but protocol commands, and given the circumstances, she'd rather it be her than Titus. Appearances have to be observed, after all. So she dismisses her attendants and makes her way over, insincere mourners parting in her wake, and she offers Jupiter a regal welcome kiss.

"So," Jupiter says, "this is awkward."

"As the current head of the family, it's necessary for you to be here."

"Yeah, so I was told," Jupiter says with a sidelong glance implying the source of the information. So the lycantant is her adviser as well as a bodyguard? Interesting. Maybe unwise.

They stand side by side in silence for a while, watching the proceedings. The funeral ship is opulent, grandiose; empty. There are no rites.

Next to her, Jupiter inhales deeply several times, obviously gathering her nerve. Kalique lets her stew for a while. Whatever she wants to say, Kalique's sure she doesn't want to hear.

"He told me, ah. Before he died, he told me he killed your mother. I thought you have a right to know. I'm sorry."

She shouldn't be shocked - she always suspected - and yet she is: the words are like a physical blow, like a sudden yawning emptiness in her chest. Oh, Mother. Oh, Mother, Mother.

Jupiter is mercifully silent, standing still now. Waiting. When Kalique makes herself look at her, her eyes are searching, dark. Full of pity, so alien on Mother's face. Kalique despises her. Kalique doesn't have anybody else to speak to, right now.

"I should have known. We were both unhappy after Titus' birth, but Balem was more like a spurned lover than a jealous son, and he got worse and worse as the years went on. I think Mother knew, too, but she was always - he was her heir. She worried about him."

She can't make herself say "she loved him" just now, even though it's nothing but the truth.

Jupiter closes her eyes, briefly. Kalique regrets her words already: what can Jupiter offer her but gloating, about Balem? What can Kalique herself offer right now, with that new knowledge settling heavily into her lungs?

"I didn't kill him, you know. I would have, to save my life and my family, but I didn't. He fell, Kalique. He was - maybe it was mercy, in the end."

Kalique nods. They don't speak anymore until the empty ship sails into the sun.

Before they leave, Jupiter stops her, lays a cool palm on Kalique's bare wrist.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Are you?"

"He was your brother."

When she gets back to Cerise, she feels _old_. Her body is barely two weeks over twenty, and yet she can hear every second of her fourteen millennia humming in her bones, in her ears, in her teeth. Only her and Titus left, now. Only her to remember: Mother laughing under the sky, silver and rubies, stars in her hair, careless, carefree. Balem bowing over her hand, smile stretching his mouth, hiding in his eyes. So long ago, going, gone.

She banishes everybody but the pool technician, undresses by herself, fingers tangling in the fastenings and buttons. Steps into the water and closes her eyes and hopes for the lighting arch of rebirth to take her memories away.

* * *

Jupiter calls on her two years later, and the request for a meeting is dry, self-assured. Kalique hasn't paid more than cursory attention to her progress through the Commonwealth, but she assumes her - her sister, maybe? - was busy. She accepts.

Three days later Jupiter's yacht, a sleek gray craft, sets down on the alcazar's landing pad. Jupiter steps out of the ship, with the inescapable slice a step behind, and Kalique searches for the differences time has brought. In these two years Jupiter seems to have grown into her face, inhabited it in a way she hadn't previously. The way she takes a weapon off her hip to surrender it to one of the servants suggests that she's well familiar with it. Kalique's almost sure she's wearing, highly illegally, heavy skyjacker boots.

It's harder to find Mother in her, now. Kalique can't help but try.

"Jupiter, dearest," and Jupiter smiles at her in a way that's all teeth and no uncertainty at all.

"Thanks for having me, Kalique. I've hoped for a private conversation with you, and Caine will wait outside. Oh, and Captain Tsing was kind enough to provide an escort for us again. Her ship is in the orbit."

The hint lacks subtlety but is delivered nicely enough, and so Kalique just mutters "they grow up so fast" under her breath and lets Malidictes lead them to her private study.

Jupiter brushes a kiss on her splice's cheek before the doors, whispers something in his ear - oh really, how quaint - and then it's her and Kalique facing each other across the intricately carved crystal expanse, and Kalique doesn't know what to expect.

"So," Jupiter says, "this can be a warning, but I'd prefer it to be an offer."

"Enlighten me, please."

Jupiter sits up straighter, crosses her arms.

"In short: there will be no more Harvests. I'd like you to join me in managing the fallout."

Kalique startles so hard she sweeps one of the priceless figurines off the table and doesn't notice it breaking into thousands of glittering pieces. She chokes on outrage for a second, and then finds her voice.

"What? What?! You think I'm going to help you with that? Just because you found your pathetic _bleeding heart_ in your dotage, who gives you the right to - "

"Kalique," Jupiter tells her gently, implacably, "I'm still not your mother."

The words are like a slap; there's distant ringing in Kalique's ears. She takes a deep breath, looks at Jupiter, makes the tingling in her palms die down.

She says, calmer now: "Apologies. That still doesn't mean your offer is not ridiculous. Do you think I'm ignorant of how RegenX is made? Do you think I don't know what it is just because it comes to me in pretty crystal bottles? That I wouldn't go down to any of these planets and kill Tersies with my bare hands to get what I need?"

Jupiter leans forwards so fast Kalique almost hears the steel clang of a trap springing shut.

"Need for _what_? For what, Kalique? So you can spent a thousand years more growing flowers here? So you can be murdered like Seraphi? So you can fuck around like Titus does? Go insane like Balem did? What fucking good did your time ever do for you?"

Kalique's staring at her, her fingers digging grooves in the armrests of her chair, and Jupiter's talking too fast to stop her.

"I took a goddamned tour! I went all over the Commonwealth, and you know what? I might have scrubbed toilets for a life, but I do know what bullshit smells like, and this brave new world you've all built? It's full of bullshit. Do you know that the last actual scientific breakthrough was made before you were born? Do you know there's been no really new art or music or dancing or anything created for centuries? Do you know that however much RegenX you're pumping into the Legion, you never actually won your damn war? That they're still biting at your borders, piece by piece?"

"You Tersie upstart trash, don't presume to teach my universe to me - "

"Don't try that shit with me, Kalique. You told me, you're the one who told me that genetics are holy, that I might not be your mother but I'm whatmade your mother who she was - and you know what? She made this world, she made it into what it is, and I am looking at it, and what I'm telling you right now that it's not immortality you've been peddling to me and yourself, it's rot."

"You don't understand, you - "

"Can you look me in the eyes? Can you look at me and say, in all honesty, that you are happy here, in your dollhouse?"

Kalique looks her in the eyes. Kalique opens her mouth and forms the words and the ceiling and walls are closing on her and she can't, she can't, she can't, she can't - she can't breathe. She can't breathe.

A cleaner bot scurries over the floor, picking up the softly chiming pieces. Jupiter is silent, watching her with her dark, dark eyes. Waiting.

An eternity later Kalique says, "RegenX is the foundation for everything. If w..." - and, oh, it's surrender, and oh, hasn't she always known, and oh, isn't it sweet - "if we stop it, there would be chaos."

Jupiter has the decency not to smile. She huffs out one short, decisive breath, and holds out her hands.

"Help me do it right. Lie with me, fight with me, let's go and twist them all and fix them all and set them all free. Let's find a new way and give immortality to everybody, or let's go destroy it and let everybody learn to live as they can, I don't care. Come with me, Kalique."

There are lighting flashes of information rearranging themselves in her head - who she knows, who she has, who can be bought, who'll have to be destroyed - and it's ridiculous, it's _insane_ , it's impossible to pull off. It's intoxicating. It's glorious.

She takes the offered hands and seals the deal.

Later, after they've hashed out the preliminary details, made the first tentative plans, back to a relative calmness again, Kalique can't help but ask.

"Why? I know you are sentimental, and I know you're loyal, but I've never thought you to be so... revolutionary. You could claim Earth as your primary seat, you know, get it into the Commonwealth. You could even not harvest your properties, keep your hands clean for centuries, lean on Titus to do the same, bargain with me. Why the hurry?"

Jupiter slouches back in her chair, relaxed now, easy. She looks impossibly young suddenly, more like she did during their first meeting.

"You know, I did take a grand tour. And the universe is so beautiful. All of it, like a fairytale. And now I want to take my Mom - we had a difficult relationship too, you know, but we're doing a bit better now - and so, I want to take my Mom and show it all to her. Give her the best clothes, have people wait on her hand and foot, show her the stars."

Kalique nods. She's forgotten Jupiter has a family; she isn't sure where this is going.

"So I can go back to Earth right now, and pick Mom up, and give it all to her. But she's stubborn, and she's worked her entire life, and she's always going to look the gift horse in the mouth. And so she's going to turn to me and say, 'Jupiter, Jupiter, who's paying for all of this?'"

"And then I'll have to tell her: 'I own all these planets and I can butcher people on these planets like livestock and sell their lives, and that's why we have all of this,' and then she'll never talk to me again. And I can't take that."

"Ahhhh," Kalique says, as a last puzzle piece clicks into place in her heart. "You want to remake the entire universe _to gift it to your mother?_ "

Jupiter grins at her. "And that's why it was an offer and not just a warning. I thought you would understand."

Hours after Jupiter's ship clears orbit, she calls Maledictes into her study. She looks out of the high arch of the window while she delivers a long list of orders: who of her court is going with her and who's about to be dismissed, what ships to form her fleet, what to take, what to leave, who to contact.

He takes them in without a question or flinch, and she knows that all will be done exactly right: that's why she keeps him, all these years. But she is slow to dismiss him even after everything is said.

Twilight is falling over the endless gardens. She already can't see the flowers, just the quiet shade of crimson.

Finally she says: "Maledictes, do we still have the initial seeding sets for Cerise on file?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

She hesitates, again, inhales the heady floral scent. Closes her eyes.

"Please assign a crew to start the reverse terraforming project on Cerise as soon as we leave. Once the planet is ready, seed it again."

When her fleet ascends into space, Kalique allows herself only one last look. Imagines the statues shattering into dust, candles running together, flowers crumbling.

Then she turns away to step into her last life and leaves Cerise behind, burning to be reborn.


End file.
